ebay mistake / fiddle or reneging

[Mr_P]

Bought a very cheap game on ebay, bit of research for my project and just received this message.

Hi there, I'm so sorry! I made a mistake on the listing with the paypal email address. I missed out a full stop so it should have been "****.j" not "****j" at the start of the email addressThis means your money has gone to the wrong account :/I've been on the phone to eBay and paypal and they've advised that you go into your paypal account and try to cancel the payment. If you don't have the option to do this then you need to file a dispute via paypal (NOT eBay apparently paypal will be better).In the meantime I need to send you a request for payment via paypal. You need to pay this directly not through eBay (as it will only let you pay the incorrect email address).I'm so sorry about this - I can't believe such a little mistake has made such a mess! I'd be really grateful if you could tell me if you were able to cancel the payment.Thank you ****

They have good 150 ish 100% feedback, member for a decade.

I was the only bidder so it went for 99p plus postage.

I paid almost immediatelly after the auction ended and this message came about 6 hours later.

Maybe just reneging as how do they know I've paid if I've paid the wrong account but then if its wrong on ebay maybe it says paid. Does that make sense ?

Has this happened to anyone else ?

 

[dm65]

Sounds funny to me - paypal email address is registered to paypal, not ebay and is fundamental part of the account

I would contact ebay AND paypal and NEVER pay outside of ebay for ebay goods as that breaks their rules (that you agreed to when you signed up) and means you have no comeback with them

You still have comeback with paypal, as that's just an online payment system and independent of ebay (I like to think of them as on online credit card with similar protection)

Can't say this has ever happened to me though

 

[Mr_P]

Sounds very fishy to me but if its fraud they have gone to a hell of a lot of trouble for £4.74 including postage.

With an established account like that why not sell a bigger ticket item ?

Will investigate further tomorrow.

 

[dm65]

Sounds very fishy to me but if its fraud they have gone to a hell of a lot of trouble for £4.74 including postage.

With an established account like that why not sell a bigger ticket item ?

Will investigate further tomorrow.

I agree value wise but I can't understand how the email address could possibly be wrong (and my paranoid head wonders how many times this may have happened before)

I haven't sold anything on ebay for a while, but don't remember having to enter an email address when offering something for sale

Have you read the guys feedback rather than just the number ?

Would also say that £3.75 for posting a game sounds steep, but I am from Yorkshire

 

[Mr_P]

Account / feedback is perfectly normal just not been used for a bit

It was a bargain, maybe the combination of poor price / hassle and new 2013 postage costs mean he changed his mind and its not worth the hassle.

I did buy another item a few months ago that went for a song and he miscalculated the postage costs and the upshot was he would have been better off putting it in the bin rather than selling it.

 

[NikNak]

as with the others.... sounds very suspicious to me too....

I think i'm right in saying if you make a payment to the 'wrong' account or address, you have 2 hours to change/take back funds... so 6 hours later you didn't stand a chance... :shock:

Is his ebay account set up to take paypal..? if so (and i'm sure it is...) then this has happened more than once surely..?

As said by the others... i'd be contacting ebay AND paypal....




Nick


edit.... in fact as he's admitted its his mistake and not yours.... and that he can 'see' that you've paid, i would have expected him to do the decent thing and post the item and then HE takes the time and trouble to sort things out... not you..!!

 

[Baldhead]

How did he ring eBay/PayPal? I can't find a phone number for them.

BH

 

[powertools]

Something not right here but difficult to know what the motive is.
Personally I would not worry about it too much I would just email the seller and tell him that you have paid the money into the paypal account that he has set up and that you are now expecting the item to arrive as described and in the expected time scale or you will have no option but to open a case with both ebay & Papal and you will copy his email to them to back up your case.

 

[Mr_P]

Ringing them isn't an option even if I could find a number for ebay / paypal chances are it won't be cheap to ring, 20 mins on hold at 25p per min = £5

Will play along for a few days (have some tack for sale that finishes Sunday) and will open a dispute Monday via ebay. They really don't want ebay involved do they ?

If you rip 1000 people off at £5 a go you have £5k and no one really looks into it. If you flog a rolex or two people will investigate. Maybe I'm just a paranoid sceptic and I'm dealing with a genuine muppet.

 

[petermillard]

Ringing them isn't an option even if I could find a number for ebay / paypal chances are it won't be cheap to ring, 20 mins on hold at 25p per min = £5

Crikey, just a regular little ray of sunshine aren't you? You can contact eBay through customer services - 0845 lo-call number and a time-limited PIN for that call. Or a 10-second Google search throws up this from eBay buying guides:-

"...I did some research and finally tracked down a UK telephone number for EBAY and PAYPAL.
0208 605 3000
On ringing, you are given the option:
1) Paypal services
2) Ebay services..."

Do they make it easy to find out how to contact them by phone - of course not, it's the last thing they really want you to do! But all the info's available if you look for it.

Maybe I'm just a paranoid sceptic and I'm dealing with a genuine muppet.

Or maybe the seller's just started using one of the eBay mobile apps, and made a mistake when they set it up? Either way, let eBay or PayPal deal with it. And as said further up, don't pay for the item outside of eBay as you'll lose all the buyer protection, and could end up with your account at risk/suspended.

HTH Pete

 

[SBJ]

When you list an item on ebay, you put the Paypal account on the item and you can't change it. I know, because I made this mistake and used an old email address in the listing rather than the one I currently use for Paypal. The payment to me failed because of the old email address, so I had to change my registered Paypal email address back to the old one (lucky I still had acess to it), receive the payment then change it back again.

So, it all sounds plausible to me.

Oh, we phoned ebay/paypal and they were helpful and helped us resolve the situation. They also have an online chat help that was good too.

 

[JakeS]

Another consideration: some of the free-email-account providers actually ignore dots when checking email addresses; for example, my email address at GMail is my first and surnames separated by a dot:

[email protected]

but without the dot, or with extra dots, all work fine:

[email protected] [email protected]

and so on.



So while I'd be hesitant to just jump to the conclusion that everyone on eBay who behaves in the least bit weirdly is a scammer - I've encountered lots of weird people there over the years and only one of them has been evil - it's worth bearing in mind. If his email address is at GMail it's definitely the case that he would have got the email from PayPal anyway explaining how he could claim his funds... and I'm pretty sure they'll let you claim it with another PayPal account if you have access to both email addresses. If it's another well-known provider, you can probably find out fairly easily by searching online whether they consider dots in the name to be significant or not.




All that said, I kind of doubt a scammer would tell you to file a dispute with eBay, they don't have much to gain from that! Was the message in which they said that sent through eBay's messaging system? I'd agree that it's generally a bad idea to pay for eBay things outside of eBay, but if they've recorded themselves explaining this through the eBay system I'd hope that you'd not have much trouble with the dispute side of it!

 

[whiskywill]

just an online payment system and independent of ebay

But owned by eBay.

 

[Mike.C]

Mr_P, just out of interest did you resolve this matter? It just good to know if there are any scams going on.

Cheers

Mike

 

[Mr_P]

Well this has finally been sorted my game arrived this morning. Had to wait until the 26th of June before I could open a dispute via ebay and then after lots of messages to and fro this one from me did the trick

"I just want my money back or a game. Not too much to ask surely. I paid almost immediately after the auction ended and all I have to show for it is hassle."

They then admitted defeat and sent it recorded delivery. I posted this thinking it might be a scam I'd not heard of but now I think it was a genuine mistake, apologies for wasting your time and many thanks for the responses.

 

[Mike.C]

Success, well done.

Cheers

Mike

 

[petermillard]

As an aside, I had something very similar happen to me recently, but I was the seller! I was using an eBay mobile app on a different iPad, and when I set it up it somehow picked up a diffent email address for my PayPal account; I didn't realise the error until the buyer paid and I received a PayPal email to the odd account.

Easy enough to sort out, but an easy mistake to make as well, and glad you got it sorted.